From the September edition of The Art Newspaper (not available online).
Japanese professor Donates Rare Print To Courtauld



Following our report on the hunt for a stolen Japanese print once owned by Van Gogh, a Tokyo colector has donated a copy of the rare Geishas in a Landscape. As The Art Newspaper revealed, Van Gogh's copy, which he had depicted in the background of his Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear was stolen from the Courtauld Institute Gallery in 1981, although the loss had not been reported in the press.


Only two other extant examples of this 1870s print published by Sato Torakiyo are known, both belonging to Professor Shigeru Oikawa, a Tokyo art historian with a special interest in the links between the Post-Impressionists and Japan.
After reading about the theft of the print in The Art Newspaper, he decided to donate a copy of Geishas in a Landscape to the Courtauld, so that it will be in the collection that owns the self-portrait.
Meanwhile, Van Gogh's own copy remains lost, although it is identifiable from damage caused when he tacked the print to his studio wall in the Yellow House in Arles.

I remember a report in the Times a few months ago when the Courtauld finally admitted they no longer had the print. The suggestion was that a security guard had stolen it.

The Times reported that he first used the Torakiyo print to paint Japonaiserie: Oiran in Paris in 1887. This is now in the Van Gogh museum in Amstterdam

Van Gogh used a different source image for Oiran. The photo of the donor, Oikawa, that accompanied the article, shows him standing beside that print.



What amuses me, is that the Oiran painting is reverse from the ukiyo-e, but in the Self-Portrait painting, which was done in a mirror, the ukiyo-e image is NOT reversed. Strange.